Gameplay
by KartheyM
Summary: Gabriel wakes up in a deserted bunker with no idea where he is or how he got there-and someone else is controlling his movements. The man with a chip in his brain is trapped inside a live reproduction of a video game-but the bullets are real, and it's only a matter of time. He can only pray that the player keeps him alive till CyberCom can find him... *Pls review if ur liking it!*
1. Chapter 1: Press Play

**Part 1**

_Dark. Hard. Cold. Empty. Numb._

**"Okay, let's see... Choose Clockwork Angel."**

_Eyes open. Can't move. Empty gray room._

**"Starting now."**

"Hello?"

**"Whoa! What was that?"**

"Who's there?"

**"Nobody, idiot."**

"Who are you?"

**"There's nobody else! Empty spawn room, hello! Okay, let's move."**

_Body moving on it's own. _Gabriel sat up, scrambled to his feet, and turned to face the door, but he had no more control over his movements than a puppet on strings.

"What's happening?"

**"Nothing,"** the voice replied absently. **"Geez, this character is paranoid."**

Character? What—Gabriel's legs started walking forward again. His chip wasn't working, at least not how it ought to work. He could feel the signals bouncing around his brain, but they were translating to motor movements, not visual data—and someone else was controlling those movements.

**"Okay, let's get out of here."**

Wherever _here_ was; Gabriel walked toward the door, but his trajectory was off by a few inches—close enough, when one was dealing with computer graphics, but in the real world, Gabriel smacked into the wall, unable to stop himself. The controller still pushed him forward.

**"Come on! Go out the stupid door!"**

Gabriel felt himself jumping against the wall in a juvenile attempt to overcome graphics.

"I can't!" he called to the voice in his head.

**"It's right there!"**

"I can't!"

**"Yes I can! Stupid graphics!"**

"No I can't! You need to move me over!"

The frantic movements stopped. Everything was so silent, Gabriel could hear the hiss of the microphone.

The voice came back, much smaller.

**"Wh-wh-who is this? Where are you?"**

"My name's Gabriel, and—" he couldn't move his head, but Gabriel was familiar enough with the sort of places that had rooms like this one. "I'm in some sort of bunker. Who are you, and where are you?"

**"I-I, um, I'm at home... On my console... My name's Dani. Wait-Gabriel? ****_You're_**** Clockwork Angel?"**

"Apparently so."

**"Ohmigosh, ****_you're a real person?"_**

"And you're controlling me."

* * *

"Agent Neal," Lillian didn't even use a hint of Riley's first name, which was not a good sign. "You mean to tell me Gabriel has been completely gone for over twenty-four hours and you have done _nothing_?"

"I didn't know he was completely gone! The note said he was taking the day off and going dark for a day. If I had been there when he left I could have found out where he's going, but I wasn't!"

"Nelson!" Lillian barked. "Tell me you've got something!"

The young man's pale face dripped with sweat as his eyes and fingers flew over the screen. "I'm still searching for his signature anywhere in the vicinity, but I can't find it!"

"He has a microchip in his brain, for crying out loud!" Lillian seethed. "That sort of thing doesn't just go dark!"

"I've got the security cams from outside his apartment," Chris announced.

"Pull them up," Lillian ordered.

Chris transferred the streaming image to the display screens.

"All right, now back it up till we see Gabriel," she said.

Everyone kept their eyes fixed on the screens as people flowed backwards in and out of the building.

"There!" Riley cried.

Chris stopped the playback. Sure enough, Gabriel Vaughn, the "Clockwork Asset," clearly entered his apartment building at six PM on the night of April 17th—two days prior.

"Okay, he was there that night. I checked in at eight, like I always do," said Riley.

"Did he seem like there was something on his mind?" asked Lillian.

"What, like a chip?" Riley retorted. "No; we debriefed, said goodnight, and that was it."

Lillian faced the agent and stared her straight in the eye. "And the next morning—"

"I called at six AM, and when he didn't answer, I went over there and found the note."

"Where was the note?"

"Kitchen counter, along with his cell phone. He knows I have a key."

"Do you have it with you?"

"Yeah." Riley pulled the slip of paper out of her pocket.

Lillian accepted the note and read it. "Riley, I've decided to take advantage of my vacation and spend the day out in the wilderness—don't worry, I'll play it safe. I'm leaving my cell, but if something comes up, Lillian will know how to find me. —Gabriel." She tossed the paper onto the desk. "Well obviously he has enough faith in our techs that he assumes we can just find him wherever he goes!" She shot Nelson a withering look.

"Normally, yes, that would be true," Dr. Cassidy agreed. "But Gabriel's signal is no different in kind from the signals he accesses and processes. Like any cell, Internet, or satellite signal, it can get crossed or piggybacked or—"

"Hacked?" Riley supplied, earning her a death glare from the director of CyberCom.

"Find him," Lillian seethed through clenched teeth.


	2. Chapter 2: Ready Player One

**"Holy—"** The rest of her ejaculation was cut off, like she'd ripped the earpiece out of her ear and tossed it away. Gabriel's body gave a jerk, and he guessed she must have dropped the controller.

His mind whirled. He was at the mercy of a girl who thought she was playing a video game. Why? Who would do that?

**"Hello?"** Dani's voice returned, considerably smaller. **"Angel?"**

"Yep, still here," Gabriel answered. "Listen, I'd like to ask a few questions and I wouldn't mind answering a couple, but can I go through that door first? This wall isn't very kind on the face."

**"What? Oh yeah, sorry."**

Feeling coursed through his limbs like electricity as he felt her move his body a few steps backward, then scooting sideways like a crab before walking through the door. Gabriel's gut twisted as he took in his surroundings. He now stood in a long hallway, with nothing but cement and doors from there to the ends of the hall.

"What is this place?" he muttered.

Dani led him down the hall to another door on the opposite side from the room where he'd started.

**"It's the Labyrinth map,"** she answered. **"In the new ****_Upsilon Force_**** game."**

"Upsilon Force?" Upsilon was another letter of the Greek alphabet—very similar to was hitting close to home—and creepier than ever.

**"You've never heard of ****_Upsilon Force_****? It's the latest FPS video game, and Labyrinth is one of the bonus download maps, playable only online."**

"Online, eh? Ow!" Once again, Gabriel couldn't resist as Dani walked him into the side of the doorway, not through it. He grimaced at the pain, unable to reach up and hold his face. "Are you doing this on purpose?"

**"No! I'm sorry! I'm not used to controlling characters as if they're real people!"**

Gabriel's body shifted to the right and eased through the doorway. He tried conversation to distract himself from the agonizingly slow pace she insisted on taking. He imagined a girl, hunched in front of a small TV, coaxing his body forward one click at a time. Painful, but not as much as moving any faster and running straight into walls.

"So tell me, Dani," said Gabriel, "where do you live?"

**"California,"** she answered**.**

Gabriel grimaced as he approached yet another doorway, but Dani had evidently gotten the hang of maneuvering him, because he walked right through the opening without incident.

**"What about you, Clockwork?"**

Gabriel smirked, his eyes looking for any identifying mark in the blank grey halls, any kind of clue as to where they were.

"Name's Gabriel," he reminded her, "and I come from Washington."

**"The state?"** He was walking down another long hallway, but this one had more distinctions: doors with painted-over windows, remains of cheap tile on the floor.

"Nope; D.C." Gabriel braced for impact as she sent him inching toward a door, but just when he arrived, he felt his arm raise and push it open in front of him. Now he was walking through a bombed-out restroom. The piping had all been demolished and none of the stalls had doors. Everything was dry as a bone—but it was more exciting than poured cement.

**"Oh wow! So... Being a government agent, does this happen a lot?"**

"Does what?" For a brief minute, Gabriel had been so accustomed to combing through each room at a snail's pace that he forgot that he was in fact incapable of independent movement.

**"This, where they send you on a super-secret spy mission and you hack into somebody's video game and you gotta go through it to find some important intel or something."**

Gabriel chuckled. "No, can't say it's ever happened."

**"But, like—"** Gabriel came to a halt in a room with decomposing carpet and damaged mechanical equipment as Dani tried to wrestle with the reality of her situation. **"How is this possible? Are you some sort of cyborg or computer with tennis shoes or something?"**

He was coming to an area with more windows. Now it looked more like an underground laboratory or prison or something.

"Human computer is probably the best way to describe it," he told Dani. "So tell me about this Labyrinth. What's the game like?"

**"Oh, well, first you have to find your way to the center of the maze—"**

"Ouch!" He plowed right into a squat safe of some sort sitting in the middle of the hallway.

**"Whoops, sorry! I forgot to keep an eye out for those things. Anyway, you mostly just go through the maze and explore rooms and stuff."**

"Sounds pretty boring for a video game."

**"Yeah, well, it's an optional add-on that Delta Force users can access, so they don't have to make it a war zone like all the other maps. Half the challenge is getting through the maze—and we're almost done with that."**

Gabriel traveled through more deserted offices and empty, blank rooms.

"What's the other half?" he asked.

* * *

"Got him!" Chris shot to his feet and raised his fists.

Instantly, Lillian appeared at his desk.

"Where?"

The satellite images began zooming in on a blinking red blip on a map of the United States.

"Well, he's still in the country, so that's a relief." They watched it anxiously as the map narrowed in. "West Coast—"

"Somebody get me all the flights out of DC to the West Coast now!"

"Okay, middle part—California! Gabriel's signal is coming from Redding, California!"

"Riley?"

The dark-haired agent glanced over the map. "What kind of area are we looking at?"

"Um, it looks like a residential."

"Hm, okay; looks easy enough. I'll try calling first, see who we're dealing with. Can you get me the number when you have the location?"

"Sure."

Lillian moved to the second table of computers, where Nelson Cassidy had been combing over surveillance videos for the last few hours. "Nelson, what kind of intel can you get from yesterday morning from the time Gabriel went in to the time Riley arrived?"

"Well, here's the thing," Nelson hedged, not daring to look her in the eye just yet. "I ran facial recognition on everybody to exit the building between 8 PM and 6 AM."

"_And_?" Lillian's tone raised from desperate to dangerous.

Nelson cringed. "His face never left the building."

"How is that even possible?" the director exploded. "No suspicious hats or hoods?"

"None!"

"Wait a minute." Riley appeared on his other shoulder and squinted at the footage. "Back it up a few minutes."

Nelson obeyed, and the three of them watched as four men in paramedic uniforms entered with a gurney and emerged a few minutes later with a closed body bag. Nelson paused the video. The time stamp read 4/18/14 5:44:23 AM.

"What happened there?" Riley mused, as she and Lillian shared a look.

"On it," Chris volunteered. Minutes later, he looked up, pale-faced. "Nope," he said, "no emergency calls at that time."

"They probably didn't even use any sirens, which is why I had no idea this was going on," Riley scowled.

Lillian drew a deep breath. "You're telling me somebody just walked out of that building with Gabriel in a body bag?"

"They probably knew he wouldn't come, and we'd be using facial recognition to find him," said Riley.

"Or they killed him!" Lillian sank into a nearby chair.

"Lillian, let's not jump to conclusions," Dr. Cassidy comforted her. "His signal's still live, which means he's still alive."

Lillian pushed onto her feet again. "Right, that's true. Riley, make the call and let's catch these guys!"


	3. Chapter 3: House Rules

Gabriel was getting used to listening to Dani talk as his body walked through different rooms. She steered him straight most of the time—unless there was something that didn't render accurately on her screen, like a door jamb once, and an open file drawer at about the height of his solar plexus. Meanwhile she told him all about Upsilon Force and the campaigns that it had.

**"Actually being able to interact with my own avatar makes me wonder about the other missions I've gone on; what if those were real people too?"**

Gabriel laughed as they walked down a hallway with faded arrow signs that Dani followed. Gabriel hoped it would lead them to the middle of the maze she kept talking about.

"I seriously doubt any game would have that, since they would have to be somebody like me, and I know of only one other person who fits that."

**"Oh, okay."**

He heard her sigh with relief. "So, Dani, how did you happen to get this game?"

**"Oh, it was a special offer from Wolfcub Graphics*, one-day only. I think they're getting ready to launch Labyrinth, so this is just a beta test: the offer said the map would only be accessible on the nineteenth, so I had to wait till then to play it."**

"Hold on now!" Gabriel was grateful that Dani stopped. He stood in another dilapidated bathroom (though this one was in better shape than the first) facing a mirror. For the first time since waking up in the bunker, Gabriel saw his own face. He heard Dani gasp; she saw it too.

"Are you saying that today is the nineteenth? Nineteenth of what?"

**"A-A-April,"** Dani stammered. **"Why?"**

Gabriel sighed. "The last thing I remember is going to bed on the seventeenth. Somebody kidnapped me, and I woke up here."

She turned his body back toward where they had come from.

**"Y-you mean somebody sent me that game on purpose? That's why I had to wait till today, and why the instructions said to choose the avatar Clockwork Angel?"**

Gabriel flinched. Clockwork—the people behind this knew of the project! And they must have known him, too; Angel sounded like a subtle reference to his name.

"I'm afraid so, Dani."

He remained there, staring at his reflection in the mirror. The uneven stubble of a two-day beard coated his chin.

**"Oh, someone's calling,"** Dani said. **"Um... What would happen to you if I paused the game?"**

"Honestly, I don't know, Dani," Gabriel answered. "Would I be in any danger if you left it on while you took that call?"

**"No,"** came the quick reply. **"Not at this stage. Okay, I'll answer it."**

Gabriel waited, standing there in front of the mirror.

**"Hello?"** said Dani. Seconds later, she demanded, **"Who is this?"**

The person responded.

**"Oh my gosh. Wait, did you say Gabriel?"**

Gabriel blinked at the mention of his name. "Dani, who is it?"

**"Some government agent named Riley something?"**

A wave of relief washed over him. They'd found him! "That's my handler from Washington DC!"

**"Yeah, I'm still here,"** Dani told Riley. **"And so is he... Well, actually, he's sort of in my video game. Yeah, Wolfcub Graphics. I don't know. Yeah, he's okay. I don't know, maybe it's one of those things like in the movies where you have to get him to the end of the game in order for him to wake up…. I'm eighteen…Yeah, I can. CyberCom? Okay; cool name. Absolutely; anything you want me to tell him?"**

Silence hung for a few seconds, then Gabriel heard the receiver click.

"What did she say?" Gabriel asked.

Dani turned him back around to the marked door at the far side of the bathroom and they continued through the maze.

**"She said to tell you she's coming."**

Gabriel smiled at the thought. Dani led him to a room with a biometric scanner on the door. "What's this?"

**"I promised Agent Riley I'd keep you safe,"** Dani replied, **"At least till the agents from CyberCom arrive."**

"They're coming to me?" Gabriel couldn't even know where he was; had they pinpointed his location?

**"No, to me,"** said Dani. **"Apparently your signal led them to my house, so she said they had a way to use my console to separate the video game signal from yours and find out your true location. Which, by the way, sounds ****_totally_**** meta."**

The door opened, revealing racks of firearms and boxes of grenades and explosives. Against another wall was a bin of bulletproof body armor.

**"Have at it,"** said Dani. **"I've set the controls to free range. You can pick up anything you think you'll need in this room—you just can't leave unless I turn the controls back on. Oh, that must be your friends."**

Gabriel flinched, and basked for a moment as he was once again master of his own movements. He went around the room, examining the guns; everything in the arsenal was expected for a first-person shooter game—except the guns were very much real, as were the ammunition they contained.

Then the full effect of what she had said hit him. Cybercom had arrived? How could they have gotten to California so fast? Alarm bells rang in Gabriel's mind as he strapped on the armor. He heard the click as she turned her earpiece back on.

"Dani?" Had she answered the door already? Did she know?

She was already talking, and so didn't hear him. **"Yeah, he's right here. Good thing you brought that generator, because I don't know what might happen if we unplug the console. Hey Gabriel? I—wait, what are you... Ow! Hey! Let go! Let—Help! He—****_Uhhnngh_****…"** Gabriel heard sounds of a scuffle, and then silence. He held his breath listening for sounds of Dani's breathing. Nothing... Then very faintly, shallow breaths. Gabriel raced to the door, but as long as he had free range, he could not exit.

"Dani!" he hollered, pounding on the door as if that would wake her up. "Dani! _DANI!_"

* * *

It was nearly evening when Riley's phone buzzed with a call from the team sent to bring in Danielle Martin.

"Yes? Did you get them?"

"Negative," replied the agent. "The house was open and empty. No sign of the girl or the console."

Riley swore. "What could gave happened to her? Where could she have gone? Why did she run?"

"I don't think she ran," another agent responded. "We found a bug on her land-line."

Lillian clapped a hand to her forehead. "They knew we were coming," she concluded.

"And somehow they managed to get there first," Riley added. "But who the heck are we dealing with and how do we find them now?"

"Every hour lost is an hour closer to something very terrible happening to the asset!" Lillian said needlessly.

"Jameson!" Riley barked. "Are you still tracking the signal from Dani's console?"

Chris dove for his computer and brought up the data. "Yes," he said with surprise. "How is it still on? And... It's moving!"

"They're moving her somewhere," said Lillian. "Stay on her. Let us know the minute she stops moving. We may not know where Gabriel is, but if we find her, we have a better chance of finding him."

"And as long as that signal keeps coming, it means he's still alive," affirmed Dr. Cassidy.

"Let's get on it, people!"

* * *

***A/N: I'll take suggestions for the name of the company that manufactured this game! I was going to be "clever" and call it BadWolf, but I thought I'd better not... So if you have a better name, please message me! I'd love some suggestions! -KM**


	4. Chapter 4: Get Your Head In The Game

It felt like days dragged by with no sound from Dani. Gabriel found a pallet of MRE's and canteens of water in the back corner of the arsenal. He ate while he waited. He fervently hoped they hadn't killed her—but who were they, and what did they want with her when they already had him?

He had checked just about every gun and bomb in the arsenal when he heard a soft moan. At first, he thought it came from somewhere in the room—then he remembered.

"Dani?" he called.

**"Whaa—"** she groaned. **"Oh, my head."**

"Dani!"

She gasped. **"Who's there?"**

"Dani! It's me, Gabriel!" He waved his hand in front of his face, wondering if she could still see him.

**"What the—"** He heard her shuffling around on cloth, and heard the clicking of controller buttons. His body numbed again as she assumed control.

**"Gabriel?"**

"Dani, are you okay?"

**"I'm—I'm alive,"** she groaned. **"And it's dark. They hit me in the back of the head."**

"Who did?"

**"Three men who said they were from CyberCom. They knocked me out and I woke up here."**

"Where is here?" Gabriel felt relief as the door finally opened and he walked out, though he wasn't exactly free range anymore.

**"I don't know."**

"Describe it for me."

**"Um, just cement walls, a hanging light on the ceiling, my TV and console on the floor. There's a door, but I can't leave the room because of you and the game, of course."**

More than anything Gabriel wished he had his rendering ability in that moment. Something about the room she described—

"Dani, tip my head up."

She did, so that he was looking straight at the light fixture illuminating the plain cement room.

"Does the light look like that?" he asked.

After several moments of shocked silence, Dani swore.

"I'm afraid so, Dani." Gabriel told her what she had just figured out. "They brought you to me. We're in the Labyrinth together."

More breathless silence. Then—

**"Gabriel, did you pick up supplies in the armory?"**

She tipped his head back down to survey the gear around his feet.

"Yeah."

**"Then get ready."**

"Ready for what?"

**"I am unarmed and unprotected. If I am in the game too, you have to come find me!"**

"What's all the firepower for? I thought this game was just a big maze."

**"That's Objective One: navigate the maze and find the arsenal. For Phase Two the game switches to MMO mode and other players who've successfully reached the arsenal can join and it's a free-for-all fight."**

_MMO,_ thought Gabriel. _Massive Multiplayer Online._ "You mean I'm going to have other players coming at me?"

**"As far as I know, not till you find me. Oh crap, I don't want to die!"**

"You're not going to die," he reassured her as she began steering him quickly and erratically in her panic. At least the body armor absorbed the contact his body made with the walls. "The other players will all have computer generated avatars, right?"

**"Gabriel,"** Dani chided him, **"This bunker is ****_real_****. The game is ****_real. _****What if the people who put you in here brought me in here to make it easier for them to lure you in and kill you?"**

"I'm coming, Dani."

She didn't reply for several minutes. Her next missive made his blood run cold.

**"Stand by,"** she warned him. **"Three other users just joined the game."**

"Just get me to you!" He grunted. Three players; Gabriel hoped they'd be holograms.

The walls bounced by quicker now.

"I'm coming, Dani!" Gabriel yelled.

Something moved in the shadows and Gabriel instinctively willed his vision into infrared mode. Nothing changed, but he heard Dani cry, **"Whoa!"**

"What happened?"

**"I dunno! The screen was getting really dark, and then everything just warped to night vision or something!"**

Gabriel sighed with relief as he came to a stop. "That's my infrared vision."

**"****_Your _****infrared?"**

"Just tell me if you see anybody coming."

**"Um, yeah; bogey on your one o'clock."**

Gabriel reached into the backpack he'd grabbed in the arsenal and pulled out a handgun. Training it just north of the position she indicated, he fired two warning shots. He heard a yell around the corner, and a hail of bullets whistled into the wall just in front of him.

"Duck and move!" He called to Dani.

Instantly, his body lowered into a crouch and he rolled forward around the corner. She had him running in a crouch as bullets whizzed over his head. The shooting stopped, and Gabriel cried, "Corner!"

Dani directed him to the recess in the wall nearby.

**"Oh my gosh!"** she shrieked. **"I've never felt this desperate in a game before!"**

"Yeah, just hold onto that," Gabriel muttered back. "You don't get extra lives in this one!"

**"Understood. Ready to go?"**

"Check over my shoulder one more time."

His head turned, and Dani announced, **"All clear."**

"Okay, move out nice and easy!"

His feet inched out of the corner and further down the hall.

**"Wait!"** Dani brought him to a halt. **"I see a claymore around the corner. Someone else must be over here."**

"Can you see the rest of the map?"

**"Yeah, but only two markers in the vicinity: the one we just left, and—oh, he just got killed by another player right next to him."**

"So there should be a third—"

A flurry of bullets cut him off.

**"Yikes!"** Dani reacted too slowly in getting him crouched and rolling through a doorway nearby. Gabriel cried out in pain at the white heat of a bullet grazed his shoulder.

**"Gabriel!"** Dani cried, **"Are you okay?"**

"Just a graze—but now I'm bleeding. Why didn't you warn me about those two guys?"

**"What two? I'm sorry, I didn't see any markers over there!"**

"Get me to the doorway."

Dani obliged, and his body scooted to just within the threshold. From there, he could make out two gunmen dressed exactly alike.

"Are you seeing this?" he asked Dani.

**"I don't know; the camera angle's being all screwy; those must be the NPC's, the non-players. That's why you can see them and I can't."**

Gabriel winced, as most of his weight rested on his injured arms. "In other words, the ones you can see are fake, and only I can see the people with real guns and real bullets."

**"Here, let me try going free range again."**

Gabriel felt a jolt, and his body collapsed on the floor.

**"Did it work?"**

Gabriel eased his own body back up to a crouched position. "Yeah; now what?"

**"You can't leave the space you're in while you're in free-range mode, but if you can see those guys from where you are and I can't, I figure you don't have to move."**

Gabriel lined up the shot and pulled the trigger. One gunman fell.

The other fired ahead of himself as he charged forward—right into the crosshairs of the claymore. Gabriel ducked back inside the room as shrapnel flew past the doorway.

**"Gabriel!"** Dani's scream echoed through his head.

"I'm fine!" he called. "I got 'em!"

**"You're close,"** she said, resuming control of him and raising him to his feet. **"I could hear that explosion."**

"Okay, let's keep going."

**"All right; watch out for those NPC's."** Dani led him out of the room and down the hallway. Lights flickered as grenades and submachine guns exploded behind him.

**"Uh-oh; two more players just joined the game."**

"Good thing I didn't plan on going back to the arsenal," Gabriel grunted. He took the path next to the mutilated body of the second gunman. Instantly, his head twisted to focus on the opposite wall.

"Squeamish?" he mused.

**"Not usually,"** Dani said, **"but that was before I knew there could be real people here."**

Gabriel could do nothing as a flurry of bullets erupted from the corner.

"NPC!" he yelled. "Eleven o'clock!"

Instantly, his body whipped around and he pulled up the AK-47 strapped to his shoulder. Dani fired two spurts in the direction he indicated, and a body thumped to the ground.

**"Did I get it?"** she asked.

"Nice shooting," Gabriel said as he started to move forward again.

**"Thanks."** Suddenly the gun was pointed at the ceiling and his finger clenched the trigger.

Gabriel felt one of the shells fall on his head. "What the heck was that for?"

**"Direction-finding,"** Dani answered. **"You're getting closer."**

The tunnels were pitch-black around him, but he knew she could see her way around with his interfaced infrared vision.

**"Say something,"** she told him.

"DANI?" he yelled as loud as he could.

**"HOLY CRAP!"** she shrieked back, and Gabriel realized that he could hear her voice echoing further down the hall as well as in his head.

His feet moved faster as she fairly ran him down the hall and through a doorway so sharply that he smacked into the side again.

"Ow!" he yelled, and automatically raised a hand to his head.

He heard the sound of plastic striking cement.

"_Oh… my… god…"_ said a hoarse voice.

Gabriel lowered his hand and stared. In the middle of the room sat a young woman with short brown hair, wearing jeans and a green hoodie. She stared at him with wide, terrified brown eyes. Her mouth hung open.

He smiled, "Hi, Dani; I'm Gabriel."


	5. Chapter 5: Game Changer

She yanked the microphone off of her ear and slowly climbed to her feet, eyes still fixed on him.

"Y-y-you… H-h-how—" She broke off and slowly reached out a hand. She placed her fingers against his shoulder and pushed.

"_You're real!"_ she gasped shrilly. "And—and you're really bleeding!" She saw the thick red mark where the bullet had grazed him.

Her whole body began to tremble as she covered her face with her hands and sank back into the chair she had occupied. "Ohmigosh," she murmured over and over again. "Ohmigosh! Ohmigosh!"

"Dani," Gabriel moved toward her and put a hand on her shoulder. "We have to get moving."

She flinched like his fingers burnt. "I—I don't… I can't…" She still shook visibly.

Gabriel gripped her shoulder. "Dani, look at me."

She still kept her face covered.

_"Look at me!"_

Finally, she pulled back her fingers and met his gaze. He reached up and pulled her hands down.

"I know you're scared, I know you haven't been in the middle of anything like this before; but you can't let it get to you! I promise I will keep you safe, Dani, but we need to leave _now!_"

"But—" she glanced down at the video game equipment. "What about the console and the TV?"

Gabriel's hands tingled from his fingertips to his shoulders as he picked up the controller from the ground between Dani's feet. He placed it in her lap. The console, he saw, had a small black box plugged into the back with an antenna sticking out of it. "What's this?"

"Oh," Dani glanced at the box, then resumed staring at the controller in her lap. "It's a portable battery pack they plugged in so the console could be mo—" She suddenly looked up at Gabriel as the same thought happened in both their minds.

He grinned. "We can take it with us." He dropped the backpack and opened it, pulling out most of the firearms and grenades he'd packed in there to make room for the console.

Dani watched him, still in shock. "How much stuff did you get from the arsenal?"

Gabriel slid the console into the backpack and repacked as much as he could around it. He tucked two of the pistols inside his belt on his hip and in the small of his back.

"No extra lives or unlimited ammo, remember?" he quipped. He offered her the two remaining pistols. She shrank away as if they had been snakes.

"N-no," she stammered, "I can't—"

"Dani," he pressed one pistol against her chest and slipped the other one in her pocket, "You have to. We can work together and make it out of here alive, I promise."

She grudgingly accepted the last pistol and put it in her other pocket. "So, how do we do this?"

Gabriel cleared the doorway with his eyes before moving to cross the threshold. An invisible force held him back.

"Why can't I leave?" he asked Dani.

"Oh," Dani picked up the controller, "because in free range mode the avatar can move around the room independently, but he can't leave it."

Gabriel grimaced. "So I guess you're calling the shots," he said.

Dani looked stricken.

"Don't worry, I'll help you," Gabriel reassured her. "Now, how do we finish the rest of the game?"

"Um," Dani scrunched up her eyes in thought, "Once you get the hostage, there's a series of checkpoints you have to cross to reach the exit."

"Do you know where the checkpoints are?"

Dani glanced back at the TV screen. She pointed to the map in the corner. Gabriel noted the blinking marker that indicated his position with interest. So _this _is what she'd been watching the whole time. The image on the screen showed the avatar looking at the TV from about his height, creating an "infinity-mirror" effect. Gabriel narrowed in on the map, intent on committing the position of each flashing checkpoint marker to memory.

When he opened his eyes, he was right in the middle of a perfect render of the whole map. He could see the position of the other players (there were seven now), the NPC's, and all the checkpoints on a topographic grid. He grinned.

"Dani, I can see the map."

"What do you mean see it? It's behind you."

"I see it in my head. I can get us to the exit. Here's how it's going to be: You steer me to the checkpoint from a safe place, and then give me free range and I'll cover you as you change positions. Think you could manage that?"

Dani blinked twice, and then nodded.

"Okay," Gabriel moved as close to the doorway as he could. "Ready?"

She hefted the backpack onto her back, gulped, and held the controller with two hands. "Ready."

"Go!"

Dani coached Gabriel down the tunnel. He told her where to turn and when to shoot. The render updated seamlessly, giving him a color-negative view of everything that was going on in that bunker. He arrived at the first checkpoint amid a brawl between cold-hearted human "NPC's" and trigger-happy projected avatars.

"Still with me, Dani?" he called, hoping his chip was still interfacing with her controller.

"Yeah." Her voice was short and clipped. He could tell she was holding her breath.

"Okay, give me free range, and wait for my go." The numbness in his arms dropped, and Gabriel stepped out into the corridor, aiming for the space outside the room he'd just left. "Okay, Go!"

The green hoodie cannoned out of the doorway and scuttled up the corridor toward the checkpoint. Dani crouched the whole way, and only stopped when she slammed into Gabriel's side. "Watch yourself!" he caught his balance and steadied her.

"Sorry!" Now that they were in the hallway, they had to yell over the thundering of bullets and grenade explosions.

"Ready for the next one?" Gabriel asked.

"Yep." Dani lifted the controller and pressed the command to resume control of her avatar. Gabriel felt the numbness return.

"On my signal—Go!" His legs took off down the corridor, much more fluid this time. Gabriel almost could not feel Dani's control over his limbs. He saw a threat, and his gun came up to meet it. He called a turn, and his body pivoted to take it. When she met him at the second checkpoint, he allowed himself a tad longer break than before.

This time it was Dani asking, "Ready?"

He nodded and clenched the gun. "Go!"

Dani hollered something behind him, but her words did not register as a terrific explosion shook the building behind them. Gabriel threw himself out of the way, down the hall, and darted into a recess in the hallway. A gunman—obviously NPC—emerged under the flame cover, firing toward his previous position. Gabriel raised the gun, but it was a split second before the weapon actually fired, as if his hands were on a delay timer. The rest of his body felt normal, but his hands still retained the numbness of being artificially controlled. Dani wriggled into the small space behind him.

"Wow!" she cried. "I think the controller is losing battery or something; I never switched you off of free range mode, but you were able to move outside the boundary."

Gabriel wagged his head. "Just as long as it doesn't run completely out!" He raised his hand. "I can't move my hands; you'll have to do the shooting for me." A "frag" grenade struck the ground ten yards from where they sat. Instinctively, Gabriel threw his arm around Dani's shoulders to shield her from the shrapnel.

"I can keep you safe," he told her. "You with me?"

Dani looked into his eyes and nodded.

"Let's go!"

They moved out again, Gabriel shielding Dani with his arm while she used the controller to pull the trigger. They blew past the third checkpoint, and the fourth—but there, they were pinned down under heavy fire from almost every direction.

"Dani!" Gabriel shouted over the roar of the guns. "I can see daylight!"

"We're so close!" she wailed. They crouched under the cover of a bank of sandbags, which couldn't last much longer under the continuous strafing of bullets.

The gunfire paused briefly, then started again a half-second later—only this time, it wasn't shredding the sandbags.

Gabriel heard a ferocious pop, like a cord that is yanked out of the socket while the appliance is in use, and once again, his whole body went numb. He crashed to the ground face-first, unable to speak or even think.

"Gabriel! Gabriel!" Dani's frantic screams floated to him on thick waves, and she seemed to be reaching toward him from far away. He was sinking under water….

There was light…

Riley appeared over him…

They were moving…

The gunmen were gone…

_Silence. Black, dark silence._


	6. Chapter 6: Game Over (Restart?)

_Light. Soft. Warm. Comforting._

"Gabriel?"

_Familiar voice. Worried. Worried for him._

"Gabriel? Can you hear us?"

_Different voice, still familiar…Still worried._

Gabriel blinked and opened his eyes. White, cracked ceiling, white bed frame, white blanket, white bandages, blue gown—

Riley sat on the other side of the white barrier around his bed. She smiled at him. He grinned as the old familiar data streams appeared in his mind's eye. A young woman came to stand next to Riley. She had short brown hair and a bandage on her face. Facial recognition gave her name as Danielle Martin and listed an address in Redding, California. Gabriel's eyes roved to the tree of IV bags next to his bed. Identification tags pegged the hospital as Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Gabriel blinked. He looked at Riley.

"Utah?" he asked weakly.

She smiled and squeezed his hand.

"How did he know we were in Utah?" Dani whispered.

Riley smiled, "He's smarter than he looks."

Gabriel smiled and moved to reach over to the young girl whose life he saved—and who had in turn saved his life. He was gratified to feel the roughness of the hospital blanket as his hand obeyed his brain for pretty much the first time in a while. Dani placed her hand over his.

"We made it," she said.

"What happened?" asked Gabriel. "At the fourth checkpoint, I mean. Before I—popped."

"The CyberCom agents went looking into Wolfcub Graphics and found out they once had a factory in Salt Lake," Dani answered. "That's how they figured out where we were."

"Factory," Gabriel mused, as the requisite information appeared in his brain. "The bunker?"

Dani nodded. "That big crack you heard was when the CyberCom techs figured out how to disconnect all the avatars—which included you, I guess—and so all they had left were the real enemies to fight. Then Riley and a few others found an entrance from the outside and basically fought their way in to get us."

"It's a good thing you two were so close to the surface," Riley remarked. "We sent a team in there to clear it and from what I hear the whole complex is like a maze that penetrates the mountain range pretty deeply."

Gabriel glanced at Dani. "A labyrinth, right?"

The girl nodded.

Riley began chewing on her lip, a sure sign she had something to tell him.

"Dani," Gabriel said, "would you mind stepping outside for a moment? Find Lillian, I'm sure she'll let you call your parents and let them know you're safe."

Dani glanced between the two of them and nodded, understanding.

When they were alone, Gabriel asked, "What is it?"

Riley sighed heavily. "It's Wolfcub Graphics. Their game series, _Upsilon Force_? It's—well, see for yourself."

Gabriel stared unseeing up at the ceiling and accessed the online data about the game series. Apparently the crux of the premise centered around a top-secret government agency that recruited and artificially enhanced "gifted" and "special" assets, each of which had their own campaigns within the game, telling their story, and in the online games, players could choose from any one of the characters to role-play in various competitions like capture-the-flag, king-of-the-hill, and the one he and Dani had experienced, the free-for-all.

Most disturbing—in addition to the existence of one character by the name of "Clockwork Angel" whose story and "superpower" closely resembled his—was the fact that this agency was apparently led by a fair-haired, determined woman, the character stories invariably involved the aid of a brilliant scientist with shaggy grey hair named Doctor Shen, and they were perpetually at odds with the other United States security an defense agencies. There was also the matter of the "fictitious" agency's name: CyberCorps.

He looked at Riley with a confused frown. She sighed.

"Lillian has techs exploring the possibility of a leak or a mole within CyberCom. Meanwhile, we're fighting massively accelerated levels of encryption with anything pertaining to Wolfcub Graphics. They seem to be very selective about their publicity, and anything remotely unflattering is scrubbed."

"Sounds like a hornet's nest to me," Gabriel commented wryly.

Riley nodded, "It's been busted wide open, and there's no going back now."

"So," Gabriel murmured as he closed his eyes to rest,

"Which one of us is the nest, and who kicked first?"


End file.
